


boreas on the downswing

by ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, President Toby Smith | Tubbo, Toby Smith | Tubbo Deserves Better, Toby Smith | Tubbo Needs a Hug, presidents curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-23 00:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30047136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes/pseuds/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes
Summary: Tubbo swallows down tears. His legs shake, but he stands because no matter how much he's shivering or how badly he aches, there is always work to do.Before he can make it to his desk, Tubbo bends over double and starts to cough snowflakes.-In which the President's curse is a lot more physical than suspected.
Relationships: Ranboo & Toby Smith | Tubbo
Comments: 23
Kudos: 170





	boreas on the downswing

Tubbo thinks too much, is what Alex says. And sometimes, on nights like these, when Tubbo is sat shivering next to a jukebox, Tubbo thinks he might be right.

Because really, Mellohi doesn't matter all that much. It's nice. Chirp is better. Tubbo likes Chirp; it's a slow, buzzing start, it's a happy finish. But when Tubbo thinks about his life and Tommy and the discs that don't matter all that much, he feels Mellohi in his soul. That's what he felt on the 16th. That steady three-step, perfectly in line, and then the harmony, that string of feelings that came in and ruined it, that dragged in the other notes.

And Tommy, in his frenetic energy, in the way that nothing quite fit right at the beginning, was a little like Cat.

Was. That past tense tugging his heart up his throat. He'd spit it out one day and everyone in the country would see. He'd be standing there speaking and he'd cough out his heart into the microphone, and the whole world would see how tiny and cold and useless it was.

Tubbo leans on the jukebox, staring at his desk. He feels so heavy. His stomach aches. His scars ache.

Before Cat ends, it lets out a few gasping breaths until it all fades into bright piano notes and silence. Mellohi ends the same way it started.

Tubbo puts Cat in the jukebox. The first few scrambled notes don't make any sense until you get to know them- until you find out how they laugh and joke and what makes them cry and how they smile when the whole world is in their hands. They start to form a pattern and Tubbo slams a hand into the jukebox. The song stops.

Tubbo swallows down tears. His legs shake, but he stands because no matter how much he's shivering or how badly he aches, there is always work to do. 

Before he can make it to his desk, Tubbo bends over double and starts to cough snowflakes.

He falls to his knees with a clatter, the frost twisting in his bones. It’s a long thirty seconds of coughing and hacking, trying to get in a breath without sucking down snow. It passes and Tubbo nearly sobs with relief, like he always does.

He pulls himself up to his feet, lurching into his desk just in time to start coughing again. Fucking hell. This is just ridiculous.

He looks down at his elbow and finds it damp with melting snow.

The door pushes open, and the minutes-man stares.

Tubbo tries to hold back the next cough, which is tickling in the back of his throat, but eventually, he gives in. Frost has licked up the desk where he coughed.

Ranboo squeaks. "Um, uh, Mr President?"

Tubbo looks up again. "Yeah?" He shivers, wiping the snow off his mouth. His lungs feel significantly more empty than before.

Ranboo stares at him for a second longer and then grabs a book from his pocket, turning around and running out of the room. Tubbo groans loudly, his head in his hands, and gets up to follow him. It's so cold outside his room. Tubbo is so cold.

He stands outside Ranboo's door and knocks. There are no locks, but Tubbo isn't rude.

"Ranboo? Ranboo? Can we talk?"

"Will you tell me what that was?"

Tubbo sighs again, lighter this time, hoping that Ranboo won't hear, and then reluctantly acquieses. The door swings open.

Tubbo walks in and sits himself down at the desk, his joints weak from the frost and his head still heavy from his coughing fit. Ranboo stares down at him nervously, fiddling with his memory book, pen still in hand. "Did you write that down?" Tubbo asks nervously.

Ranboo just clutches the book tighter to himself, which is answer enough.

Tubbo tries to say the explanation, but all that comes out is "Don't tell anyone."

"Does... does no one else know?"

Tubbo looks to the wall. "No one but you."

"What is it?"

Tubbo takes in another heavy breath, one that weighs down on his lungs like lead, and then holds his sore head in his hands. "I think... it's the President's curse. Wilbur and Schlatt  _ were  _ always complaining about the cold." He laughs, but there's no humour to it. "Guess I know why."

"Is it, y'know... dangerous? Are you okay?"

Tubbo peers at Ranboo through his fingers and can’t bring himself to say the truth. “No. It’s not dangerous. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re going to die,” Ponk tells him a week later. “I don’t know how this works, but every time I feel you cough it’s worse. Your lungs are just getting heavier.”

Tubbo nods solemnly. “Okay.”

Ponk stares at him with a serious look in his eyes that Tubbo has never seen before. “You should step down.”

_ And rely on Quackity to take care of this place? Rely on anyone? Let someone else die for me? _

“Not an option, big man. Sorry.”

Tubbo doesn’t look back when he leaves, but he swears the gaze that follows him is disappointed.

Tubbo's bones pull apart and snap together and crackle beneath his skin. Tubbo would kill for the fire in Tommy's eyes, dancing at Sapnap's fingertips. Some nights he could sob with how much he wants it, and he understands a little why Schlatt drank whiskey that burned on the way down and why Wilbur lit the world up. He could set the White House on fire, turn to ash inside it, and he wouldn't get the cold out of his body.

But he's had snowstorms in his chest since he stepped on that podium. His hands have been icy and blue at the tips ever since he first dug through the ash.

“You’re not the President,” Dream says, and he is wrong. Tubbo may not be a good president, but he doesn’t see anyone else in the cabinet cry frostbite.

“You look cold,” Tommy says, the night before their world dies, and gives Tubbo his coat.

When his country is destroyed, for the first time in months, Tubbo breathes.

He is so guilty for it, so sick with himself. But that doesn't change how the smoke crawls in him, how he holds Tommy's hand and feels the blood and warmth pounding into him from the point of contact.

He sits on the bench and feels the sun on his skin. “I’m so warm,” he tells Tommy. Alex gives him a knowing look, and Tubbo feels a little dumb for assuming that everything went unnoticed. “It’s warm.” Tommy looks at him oddly, which makes all the elation turn to mist. Quietly, slipping into a feeling like soft wool, Tubbo cries.

He finds a little snowy coast and builds a house there, and he can already see the village of refugees he will build from the ground. He’ll do something good. He’ll help.

He holds a hand up to his mouth, and when he breathes there is frost on his palm.

Oh. That-

That’s disappointing.

Tubbo wipes the hand on his trousers, gritting his teeth. No matter, then. Snowchester needs to be built. A new power to replace the old one, lest the world falls into chaos. He can’t keep it a secret from Jack, not when they spend so much time together, so he just coughs it up.

He’s funny.

“You should step down,” Jack says, but he doesn’t sound very sure. Snowchester needs a leader. Jack needs a leader. People need Tubbo, even if the only thing they need him to be is a poor imitation of Wilbur, curse and all.

“It’s alright, Jack. I’ll be fine.”

“What about Michael?” Ranboo asks when he finds out. “What about  _ me?  _ I’m too young to be a widower, Tubbo.”

“I’ll be fine, Ranboo.”

Tubbo pretends he doesn’t hear his husband crying that night, and they don’t talk about it again.

Jack believes him. Tommy believes him. Ranboo believed him. Ponk makes him tea and honey and tells him he shouldn’t have to die for his country.

Tubbo just smiles, because Mellohi ends the same way it started.

**Author's Note:**

> i post every sunday! leave a comment if you enjoyed :) ill reply to all of them!


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